The Acrylic Artist's Bible: An Essential Reference for the Practicing Artist

By Marylin Scott

This guide to painting techniques and subjects includes photos, diagrams and illustrations, providing instruction for both beginner and advanced artists.

With its great flexibility, acrylic paint can mimic the appearance of oils, tempera, and watercolors in unique ways, each method pictured in a separate step-by-step demonstration. The author also examines the use of acrylics with airbrush, sculptural, and printing techniques—even three-dimensional relief painting and collagraph printing methods are included—and how several of these different creative processes can be integrated successfully in one composition with ink, pencil, charcoal, and pastel. Inspiring examples of representational and abstract subjects are depicted throughout, and a complete survey of all the latest acrylic materials covers the best paint brands, painting mediums, supports, varnishes, brushes, knives, and palettes.

This book contains instructions on painting many different subjects, like landscapes, trees, mountains, buildings, still lifes, and portraits. It makes an ideal gift for someone practiced in the arts of acrylic painting, and newcomers to the art form.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Jan 28, 2009
• ISBN: 9781610583442

Book preview

The Acrylic Artist’s Bible

Marylin Scott

An essential reference for the practicing artist

Contents

Introduction

Choosing and using materials

Introducing acrylics

Liquid acrylics

Brushes

Painting knives and paint shapers

Palettes

Painting mediums

Interference colors

Using thin paint

Using thick paint

Comparing methods

Home-made canvas boards

Stretching canvas

Priming and staining

Stretching paper

Color

Primary colors

Complementary colors

Using complementary colors

A basic palette

Lightening and darkening colors

Laying out and mixing colors

Learning colors

Mixing by glazing

Using glazes

Using a limited palette

Mixing greens

Mixing browns and grays

Personal approaches

Techniques

Basic techniques

Underdrawing

Building up

Blending

Dry brush

Spattering

Scumbling

Glazing

Impasto

Wet-in-wet

Advanced techniques

Colored grounds

Tonal underpainting

Knife painting

Extruded paint

Stenciling

Sgraffito

Scraping

Thin and thick contrasts

Texturing the surface

Wax resist

Masking

Monoprint

Mixed-media techniques

Line and wash

Pastel and acrylic

Charcoal and acrylic

Oil and acrylic

Pencil and acrylic

Watercolor and acrylic

Collage

Subjects

Landscapes

Trees

Hills and mountains

Water

Tutorial: Acrylic and oil pastel

Buildings

Urban scenes

Individual buildings

Interiors

Still life

Shapes and textures

Floral groups

Tutorial: Using a restricted palette

People

Portraits

Figures in landscape

Index

Credits

Introduction

Acrylic is the newest of all the painting mediums, having only been invented in the mid-20th century. It is widely used by professional artists, but is less popular with amateur painters, which is a pity, because it is a wonderfully versatile medium capable of achieving a vast range of different effects. It may be this very quality that puts people off—when there are so many possibilities, it can be hard to decide just how to start. But with The Acrylic Artist’s Bible at hand, you have all the help and advice you will need—it’s a must-have for anyone new to the medium, and even those who have used acrylic before will find some new ideas and inspiration.

Learn about tools and materials

The book is divided into four sections. The first, Choosing and Using Materials, contains helpful advice on the paints and equipment you will need to make a start, as well as providing tips on preparing your own boards and canvases. The second section, Color, explains some of the basic properties of color, showing ways of mixing colors, either on a palette or on the working surface, and provides essential advice on choosing a starter palette. The third section, which forms the core of the book, presents the exciting range of techniques available to the acrylic painter. The chapter begins with a demonstration of three different ways of building up a painting from an initial sketch through to completion, so if you have not tried acrylics before, use these as your starting point. You will then be introduced to more unusual methods, all of which are fun to try out, so if you have not tried painting with knives, scratching into paint, squeezing paint on with an icing piper, building up exciting textures, or glazing over an underpainting, here is your chance. All the techniques are shown as a series of clear step-by-step demonstrations done by a carefully selected group of professional artists, with captions explaining what to do at each stage. In the final section, Subjects, you will see the techniques in action. Finished paintings by a wide range of well-known acrylic painters illustrate the amazing diversity of styles possible with this wonderful medium, while text and captions provide hints on composition and uses of color. As an added bonus, there are two specially commissioned Tutorials, which enable you to follow an artist’s progress from the planning of the picture through to completion. This section is intended to help you learn by example; looking at other people’s work is an essential part of any artist’s learning curve, and you may find that it helps you toward establishing your own style.

Build a basic palette

Discover new skills

But the most important aspect to being an artist is to enjoy what you are doing, and to be willing to experiment with ideas and methods, so treat this book as a springboard to launch you into the exciting world of painting with acrylics.

Look at paintings by established artists

1 Materials

Introducing acrylics

Acrylic paints are a by-product of the plastic industry, just like the latex paint we use on our walls. The pigments used for acrylics, with a few exceptions, are the same as those used for oils, watercolors and pastels; what makes them different is the binder, which is a polymer resin. This, once dry, acts as a form of plastic coating which cannot be removed.

Because the paints are water-based, they are thinned by mixing with water or with a combination of water and one of the many mediums specially made for the purpose (see page 20). With acrylics, you can paint in any consistency you like, which gives these paints what is perhaps their greatest virtue: amazing versatility. You can use them in thin washes resembling watercolor, or apply colors with a knife in thick slabs. You can use thick paint in one part of a picture and thin in another; you can build up an infinite variety of textures; and you can employ traditional oil-painting methods such as glazing—much easier in acrylic than in oil.

Painting sets

Several manufacturers offer introductory sets that include a range of pre-selected colors and, occasionally, different acrylic mediums, brushes, and palettes—all contained in either simple packaging or a tailor-made wooden box. These sets can be an expensive way to sample acrylics, and also the colors may not be to your liking, so it is usually better to purchase a few tubes and brushes separately.

Students’ colors

Acrylics, like most other paints, are produced in two versions, students’ and artists’. The former contain less pure pigment to the proportion of filler, making some of the colors slightly less intense, and the range of colors is smaller than the artists’ colors. However, most are of very good quality, and being considerably less expensive than artists’ colors, are ideal as an introduction to the medium.

Artists’ colors

A selection from a range of artists’ colors. This manufacturer produces a wide range of colors, all of which are classified as flow-formula, which indicates that they are slightly runnier than some other paints.

Full-bodied paints

This manufacturer produces both full-bodied paints, shown here, and flow-formula. The thicker paints are best for oil-painterly effects.

Tube sizes

Some, but not all, manufacturers offer tubes in two or three sizes, with an extra large one (125ml) for white, which is used up very quickly. The smaller size (22ml) is an economical choice for expensive special colors that you don’t use very often, such as reds, magentas and oranges.

Paint pots

Pots, which are usually slightly more fluid than tubed paints, are useful for large-scale studio work, but even the smaller sizes are less portable than tubes, so they are of limited use for outdoor sketching. If you do use them, avoid dipping the brush directly into the paint, as you will pollute the color if the brush is not perfectly clean.

Liquid acrylics

Liquid-acrylic color, which is slightly more expensive than tube acrylics, resembles ink or liquid watercolor. It is available in bottles with standard screw tops, and most bottle tops contain a dropper for transferring paint onto the palette. Liquid acrylics can be used in much the same way as ink and watercolor. Because they are made using an alkali resin, they can be softened and removed from pens and brushes with a preparatory alkali cleaning fluid.

These paints are good for painting in watercolor mode, and work better than diluted tube colors. However, they are no substitute for true watercolor, and cannot be manipulated on the painting surface because they dry too fast.

Acrylic inks

Inks can be used in combination with acrylic paints, and are popular with artists using mixed-media approaches. The pearlescent inks shown here produce an attractive shimmering effect.

Acrylic inks

Reviews for The Acrylic Artist's Bible

[vivl_6 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

As an art student, I have found Marilyn Scott's "Artist Bibles" books to be well laid-out, easy to read (unusual for text books) and extremely useful.